Faceless Illusionist
by dreaming-incense
Summary: Beni makes one friend at Hogwarts,and falls in love with him.But she horribly discovers that he doesn't love her back. When Beni loses faith and tries to take her own life, will he be her only hope, or is he still fuming over her confession?
1. Default Chapter

A/N: The beginning of this story was inspired by work by Edgar Allen Poe; so inevitably, it's not all peaches and cream. I don't know what you guys define as 'gory', but this is just a small warning if you do have a very weak stomach and a good imagination. Please, PLEASE review.  
  
Chapter 1: Going to, going from.  
  
Beni sat on the train, alone. She didn't care though; it wasn't like she'd ever had friends. She sat staring out of the dusty window, at the constant landscape outside, not really sure what she was looking for. A change, an unfamiliarity maybe, meanwhile losing herself in her own thoughts.  
  
Her eyes began to water, and she wiped away the tears. Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano. Before she died, her mother used to tell her it was because her powers were so strong. Beni used to believe it, but now, her mother had been gone for so long...it seemed like a load of shit.  
  
Her father had been murdered too. Not in the standard wizarding way either. They had been murdered a muggle way. Beni began to relive the moment she had found her mother. She hated to remember. For weeks before she would not look at her crystal ball. She was too scared, she had known something was about to happen, but it still didn't prepare her. She had walked into her bedroom, bored and tired, letting her door swing shut behind her. She had flopped on her bed, squirming around to get comfortable.  
  
She had ended up upside down, facing the back of her door. There was something on her door that was not meant to be there, something that had made her blood run cold and her eyes swivel around pathetically. She rolled over, vomiting blood all over her cream carpet.  
  
Nailed and hung on the back of her stark white door, was the stabbed, bleeding, mangled body of her mother. Her face was rotting and blue, her eyes wide, wide open, one eye missing the pupil and iris. Her hair was ratty and crawling with bugs, and mould grew on her dis-figured legs. Beni had screamed and screamed, frozen...petrified...mortified. Nobody had come...two whole days had passed, and the neighbors had grown tired of her consistent screams. All that time Beni had stayed rooted to the spot, staring at her mother.  
  
She had seen a councillor after that. Beni pulled her head in the train window, wiping the dregs of vomit from her mouth. She smiled at the thought of Bob Michael-Richardson, her wizard councillor. He had tried and tried with Beni, but nothing had worked to heal the scars left by that traumatizing event in her past. Eventually he put a memory charm on her, but Beni was special. Beni had told him that but he didn't listen to her. The memory charm had not worked. Beni could resist things like that. She didn't know why she resisted it. Maybe it was an involuntary thing.  
  
But she had pretended that it had worked, just so that she could stop seeing Bob, who she did not particularly like. She had returned to school after that. She had attended a school for the dark-arts resistors, highly selective and crawling with enemies and spies, children of death eaters. Beni was however, the kind of person that school was made for. She was from a good family; she was both special and powerful, with a wish to conquer evil. Well that used to be her anyway.  
  
She had returned home in a daze. The same daze she had been in all term. As she stepped onto her driveway she lost her vision. How many times had she walked up that driveway when she was a small girl? She walked right up to her door. She took out her key and jammed it through the keyhole. It was tougher than she remembered. She heard the click and reached out to turn the doorknob.  
  
Suddenly her sight returned and she found herself face to face with her father's wide-open eyes, both the pupil and the iris missing from each glaring eyeball. There were stab holes all over his body, he had also been cursed and hexed. His legs and arms were broken, and hung at grotesque angles. She looked at his hand, the one covering the doorknob. She had touched that hand; she had even pushed her key through it. That must have caused a grinding sound, and the click when she broke a small bone. Beni turned and ran blindly, screaming down her drive way.  
  
She knew she was next.  
  
Growing bored and tired, a severe mixture of both, Beni moved off her seat onto the floor of the compartment. Suddenly she wished she had friends, and had impulsive contemplations of actually going and making some, but as always, she remained silent, suddenly drawn like a magnet to the thing she so often felt controlled her life. The crystal ball. It wasn't something she liked, but she didn't hate it either. It made her think crazy thoughts, sometimes even do or say crazy things, and then she would have to sit down and stare at it, no matter how much she resisted.  
  
Her mother had had the same gift, although she said Beni had it stronger. Beni believed her too. It took less than a few seconds for her to see things, and it was very rare that a crystal should call the seer to it the way it did Beni. Suddenly the compartment door opened. Beni felt her stomach drop down, replaced with a sick, empty feeling. She had observed the following events in her life through the ball previously. It was the same thing that happened at her old school, and the same thing that happened all the time. She prepared herself for the inevitable. She had seen it all so vividly, so detailed; she even knew their names...one, right after the other.  
  
Ginny Weasly walked in. She took one look around. She took one breath of the sweet, rich, poisoning evil aroma that Beni breathed out of her own lungs, took one look at Beni herself, gasped, and fled. Beni rolled her eyes. Who was next? She remembered, 'Ginny runs off to her big brothers now, and, here they come.'  
  
Three, two, one. The door slid open. The two boys gawked at her, entranced by her unique appearance. She looked at them.  
  
"Hello." She said, mechanically.  
  
"Freak!" one of them exclaimed loudly, and murmurs of laughter could be heard from behind him. She looked at his twin helplessly, pleadingly.  
  
"Fuck you, ya queer." He spat at her, and then he turned smirking, and found himself face to face with Draco Malfoy.  
  
As the twins walked away, Beni got a strange impulse that the boy staring at her right now hated the last two. Then why had one of those twins clapped him on the shoulder as if to say, 'go for it'? She looked up at the pale sneering boy standing in the doorway. He was different to the last two. He felt...authoritized, domineering. He was writing something on his thumb with a beautiful golden quill. Looking up at Beni every now and again, smirking. Suddenly, he strode into her compartment and knelt down in front of her. She saw a few people poke their heads in the door for a better view.  
  
"My name is Draco." Said the boy. Beni, although she hated the rushing feelings of attraction she felt for this boy, she wanted to lean over and kiss him, just to feel the warmth of his body against the coldness of his heart.  
  
"I know." Beni whispered. Draco leant forward and grabbed her chin, pulling her face towards him. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, getting closer and closer to him. She felt his other hand on her forehead, getting closer and closer still. She could feel his warm breath of her lips, and the pressure on her forehead, harder, harder...  
  
He pushed her away, screaming with laughter. She shut her eyes. How much was she meant to endure in her life? If she had friends would this even happen? The crowd moved away. Beni knew the worst was over, but the hate was still to flow in. Three more to go. She reached into her roughly sewn bag and pulled out her crystal ball, and began to gently remove the white bandages she had used to keep it from shattering. She placed it on it's low stand on the floor of the compartment and touched it, vibing and probing her current feelings of despair and depression into it, making the familiar black light penetrate the ball and surround it's outside like an aura.  
  
She looked at the outside of the crystal, at her reflection. She squinted; there was something on her forehead...words. She leaned forward: "I had my dick removed." Was stamped across her forehead. It was what Draco was writing on his thumb, what he had pressed on there when she thought he was going to kiss her. She concentrated on her appearance while scrubbing the words off her forehead. She had long, long black hair, with silver at the top of her part. Some of her hair was wavy, some was straight and some was curly. Some was in little twists and some bits were teased and knotty. Her eyes, they were silver too. She liked them, they had a kind of white glow to them, and when she cried they turned red. Her other features were normal, plain almost to a point of being drab. Beni was not a beautiful girl, nor was she weird or scary looking, and by no means was she ugly. She was just...indescribable. She was disgustingly thin, bordering on anorexia, but it was not her fault. She ate normally and only ever threw up when she thought of her mother, which she tried not think of often. It was just the way her body did things. Beni wore lots of black. It was a good colour. Grey was gross, and Beni just didn't like anything bright and happy. It made her feel even more displaced. She also felt more comfortable, more secure with chains padlocked around her neck, not tightly but not loosely. At her old school, a boy had grabbed onto the back of her chain intending to strangle her, but his hands had burst into flames upon the first touch of the chains, and had never healed. He was cursed, doomed to walk around with hands of black, rotting, dripping skin for the rest of his life. Things like that often happened to Beni Montano. She sighed; the ink would not come off her forehead. She would just walk around with it until someone lifted it. After all, it wasn't a dramatic addition to the way she already looked.  
  
She stared into it. Images began to swirl, faster and faster, they began to slow down and then settle into precise visions. The compartment door slid open yet again. She twisted around sharply, as three tall figures entered. She searched her memory for their names. She remembered them from a vision she had of a class...potions it was, and the teacher hated them. Weasly was separated from Granger...that was what happened, and then there was another...she couldn't remember. She turned her attention to the three people blocking the doorway.  
  
"Can I help you?" Beni asked as if they were wasting her time.  
  
"Yes you can as a matter of fact. You can tell us who you are and what you're doing here and why the entire school is talking about you." Said the girl. Beni didn't like her. Maybe it was her hair, it was feral and looked as though she hadn't washed or brushed it for a month. She contemplated telling the girl, but decided against it.  
  
"We want to be your friend." Said the tall boy; with the black hair and the scar...Beni had learnt about him at school.  
  
"Potter." She muttered.  
  
"Yes?" he asked, surprised at her bitter tone.  
  
"You don't need to know who I am, or why I'm here. If you hear anyone talking about me, tell him or her to shove it up his or her ass. And I don't want you as friends. I don't like you." Beni said in a low voice.  
  
"Fine." Said the red-haired boy that hadn't spoken yet, and followed the girl out with a scoff. Potter stared at her for a few seconds, confused, and then left with the others, shaking his ugly head.  
  
Beni sat and shrieked with laughter. 


	2. Satanic Signs

Disclaimer: All characters belong to J.K Rowling  
  
Chapter 2: Satanic Signs   
  
Beni sighed agitatedly as she picked herself up out of the puddle of mud and brushed the dirt and grass out of her eyes. As she had gotten off the train, several people tried to curse her and make her fall over, but Draco Malfoy used his shoulder to knock her flying face first into the dirtiest, smelliest, gooiest puddle of slimy, wet mud. She wondered why people had to be so mean. Why couldn't they just leave her alone? What was stopping them from just letting her be invisible, un-noticed – the lost, neglected shadow on the wall that nobody wanted? That was who she wanted to be, after all.   
  
A teacher told her that she was in Slytherin, which Beni gathered to be one of the four houses. Then she instructed her to go to the great hall for the feast, but there would be no need for her to join the Sorting ceremony, whatever that was, and then up to her dorm. Beni ridiculed her expectations and scared a younger student into telling her the way and the password to her dorm.   
  
She flopped onto her bed, and enjoying the falling sensation, picked herself and flopped down again. She curled around and picked up her dark black crystal ball, which radiated a strong sense of doom. She scoffed. Why should she even bother with it? All it did was bring trouble. Even when she saw the horrible things that people were going to do to her in the future, it didn't prepare her for it and she couldn't change the future either. She wrapped it up in bandages again. Once again, she was going to resist its calling to be seen. Could she do it this time? She had tried before but…   
  
A door slammed in the distance. Beni sprang off her bed and threw the ball into her trunk roughly. Although it was made of the most fragile glass, she knew that all the disgusting, depressed, heavy feelings she had poured into it were what it thrived on. It would not break, no matter how hard anyone hit it.  
  
* * * * *   
  
"Hi. You must be the new girl. I'm Parvati, and this is Lavender." She said indicating the other girl behind her, who Beni had not seen. Parvati spoke as if she thought Beni was a huge joke, and shot a look at Lavendar that said much the same thing. Lavender however, looked petrified. Beni glared at them.   
  
She suddenly felt a burning desire to make friends with them. Would they mind her joining their little company of two? Would she feel left out or invasive? Would they dump her when they found out what everyone else thought of her? Maybe not. They were both smiling sweetly at her, after all.   
"My…my name is um, it's Beni. Beni Montano." Beni struggled with the simple words, feeling her insides tearing themselves apart. Why did this always happen? Beni forced a smile. And then -   
"And I don't give a fuck who the hell you to are, so get the fuck away from me before I scratch your eyeballs out!" Beni said aggressively, the words now flowing out uncontrollably. She examined and twirled her fingernails for an extra dramatic effect. Parvati and Lavender fled.   
  
* * * * *   
  
Beni traipsed down the corridor towards the dungeons, distantly following Potter and his friends so she would know where she was going. Once she entered the dungeons, the fear of getting lost ceased, and she began to feel strangely at home. It was the damp eeriness, the stone and the coldness, and the steady beat of the drip drip sound coming from…everywhere. Beni liked it. The setting calmed and soothed the massive storm of anger and hate that constantly raged within her stomach.   
  
She had potions. She had never taken that as a subject before. At her old school it was things like 'how to spot a death eater,' and more commonly, 'how to kill a death eater,' or 'what to do if you meet a death eater' and 'deep studies of the dark mark'. It did get a bit much in the end, but well, somebody saw a point in it, though it was full of children of death eaters, so the point had failed. Dramatically.   
  
She hovered a little away from the rest of the class, not wanting to be noticed, but there was always someone who wanted to destroy her intentions. A girl in Slytherin walked up to her menacingly, but Beni stood her ground. The class turned to watch, and somebody whispered, "Pansy, be careful!"   
"Did anyone ever tell you that you're a screwed up freak?" she asked Beni in a deadly sweet voice. Beni glared at her; she could feel her eyes burning, turning blood red.   
"You're so weird, you're so lost, you friggin loser!" Pansy's voice began to turn aggressive, but still Beni said nothing, just simply stood there staring at her. "Look at her eyes! They're turning red! What a freak!" Pansy yelled to the class.   
"You dickface, look at you, you're so queer, no one likes you! Why don't you just go back where you came from and fuck around there?!?!" She screeched, her voice rising constantly.   
"Is that the worst you can do?" Beni asked her quietly. Beni had had far worse and insulting things said to her before. Pansy was obviously the seventh-grade's-bitch, but in Beni's opinion, it really wasn't working for her.   
  
"I talk with the palm's of my hands, Montano, not my mouth." She said threateningly. Beni raised her eyebrows. It was a strange statement; she played the words over in her mind, finding less and less logic and sense in them.   
  
Suddenly, Pansy's hand flew out of nowhere, smacking Beni across the cheek, bright red nails cutting into her eyeballs and the sensitive skin around her eyes. Beni staggered from the force of the hit, and from the pain. As blood spurted from her eye and face, she began to feel sorry for herself, but then she heard Pansy's cry of anguish. It was a kind of muffled scream. She opened the eye that was not surrounded by quickly clotting blood, what she saw made her take a step back, nearly losing balance again.   
  
A hand, long and disgustingly thin, covered with tattoos of satanic symbols, with the fingernails painted black, had crept up Pansy's throat from inside her and was crawling out of her mouth. Beni recognized that hand. In a panic, she looked down. Both of her hands were still part of her body…what the hell was this hand? She looked back a Pansy. The hand had stopped creeping outwards, and hung limply out of Pansy's mouth.   
  
The arm was still blocking Pansy's airway, which explained the way she was thrashing her body around blindly, tears of acid poured from her eyes and burnt her cheeks, making black and blistered streaks down her face.   
  
A voice shouted in the distance, footsteps came running…closer and closer. Beni shut her eyes in confusion. She felt another hand connect with her face, this time much stronger and much more powerful. The thump knocked her to the ground. She stayed there. She liked the ground. She looked up to see Draco Malfoy towering over her, shaking with…something. Fury, aggressiveness – insanity perhaps. He swung his foot back and planted a heavy kick in her stomach, and then moved away. She looked up at the rest of the class through humiliated, hating red eyes.   
  
  
They were filing into a classroom, Pansy was leaning against a wall, arm-free,   
but the acid tears had kept her face very burnt and very…blind. The headmaster,   
whom Beni had met in her interview and acceptation into Hogwarts was bending   
over her, with the nurse. Then they took her off somewhere, to the hospital wing   
probably. They both ignored Beni, who now sat up, and threw up blood all over   
the stonewall in front of her. Bits of it splattered backwards and hit her in the face,   
mouth and hair. Things like this often happened to Beni Montano.  
  
There was a low, steady droning sound in her ears, mingled with muttering. The blood disappeared from the wall, and vanished from her face, her eye, the taste from her mouth and the streaks of it in her hair.   
"Get up." A sharp voice snapped at her. Shakily, she rose to her feet and turned to face the speaker. It was a man, about a head taller than her. He had longish black hair that fell into his dark, cold black eyes. He wore high-necked robes, like Beni, although his robes swept along the ground and flicked around corners. His skin was pale, but his features were quite normal.   
  
Beni supposed he was the teacher. "You are a mess. Do not attend this class." He said, and stalked into the classroom. "Parkinson, see me after class. You've just cost Slytherin 20 points." Beni heard the same man say sharply into a startled silence. She began to move off to the closest bathrooms.   
  
But then it happened. It was time. There was no resisting, no way to stop it. Beni ran and ran, she probably tripped over herself, but it was not something that sank into her memory. What she remembered was her screaming. And the blood. She screamed and screamed, for at least 20 minutes until she reached the ball, and in all those 20 minutes she did not once take a breath, just one long, mortifying, continuous, chilling scream. And as she ran, her footprints left blood on the ground, just as they would if she were running with mud on her shoes.   
  
It all stopped as soon as she touched the ball. She became sane, and ashamed of what had just happened. She knew she would have disturbed other classes. She quietly carried the crystal ball down to one of the dungeons. She liked it there, excluding what happened earlier. She sat cross-legged on the floor, quite comfortable despite the hard, cold, rough surface of the stone.   
  
She peered into the ball, and the images began to form. "What are you doing?"   
  
Beni looked up, shocked. She'd placed a very heavy locking charm on the door, how could anyone be here? In the reflection from her crystal ball, she saw the potions teacher. She twisted around to face him. He came and sat across from her, and peered into the crystal himself.   
"Do you want to talk about what happened outside my classroom today?" he asked her tentatively.   
"No." she answered shortly, wondering what the hell he was doing. Maybe it was his room. They sat in silence for a minute or so, him staring at the crystal and Beni staring at the top of her eyelids.   
"What do you see?" she asked him, staring at the glowing black ball and breaking the silence.   
"I don't see shit." He answered. She used the crystal to find information about him…something she could use to her advantage.   
  
"I thought you might have. Occlumency and all…you seem the type." She looked up to see his reaction, but there was none.   
"Many a time have I tried, I am not a crystal reading person. What do you see?" he asked Beni. She frowned and concentrated, not that she needed to, it just seemed appropriate to act.   
"Sometimes it is best not to see things. It makes you scared of the future, you know. I see the things people do and say to me before they happen. But there is still nothing I can do to change the future." She answered, afraid of telling him what she really saw.   
"So what do you see?" he prompted. Beni let out an internal sigh of frustration. All she could see was people humiliating her, how on earth was she supposed to describe that to him?   
"I need time." She said, searching rapidly for excuses. But the man held out his hands as if to say, "Go on, I have all the time in the world.' She glared at him, and then at the ball.   
"I see…um." She began, flicking through the various images that flew past until she could find a suitable one to describe to this stranger. "I see tomorrows quidditch match, Griffindor versus Slytherin, the players in green are flying into the players in red and they all look like they are insane. Some time later…" she skipped the vision forward a little. Beni never took any interest in quidditch. "Some time later, Potter grabs the snitch, and hits Malfoy in the crotch at the same time, so Slytherin get a penalty or something and end up winning the match." She finished, knowing that the win over Griffindor would please him.   
  
"Interesting. Is that really what you see?" he asked skeptically, "Or what you want to happen?" Beni just raised her eyebrows at him.   
  
It turned out that Beni's prediction was precise, if so, more than precise. After her conversation with Snape, he invited her to come to his next lesson, and suggested she came a little bit later to avoid any…unnecessary circumstances. Beni nodded and quickly returned to her dorm. The other girls had left to go to dinner. Beni wasn't hungry; she figured that she'd eat later. She used the crystal ball to find the way to the kitchens.   
  
While everyone was at the celebration feast, Beni once again crept down to that same dungeon with her crystal. It was time again. She sat, and finally looked in and performed her first proper seeing since she had arrived here.   
  
_She saw them all whispering about her. She tuned into what they were saying. "She's so weird! Her eyes are always red. Did you hear about her screaming? Who the hell is she anyway? She scares me. She's a freak. Did you hear about what she did to Pansy? I heard she's way older than all the seventh graders. So what's she doing here? I dare you to ask her. She'll probably murder you. I'll get that fucking cunt for what she did to Pansy." _  
  
Beni shut her eyes. How did they find out she was older than everyone else? At her old school, she spent one and half years in each grade, instead of the one year like in Hogwarts, so while all of the seventh graders at Hogwarts were seventeen, Beni was twenty. She looked in again. Images flashed by, and one did so continuously. She hated those. It happened with the time her mother died, and with her father. She had never watched either of these visions, so she wouldn't watch this one either. She spent a little while watching the present, the people she disliked the most, trying to find their weaknesses.   
  
She decided to find an image of Snape. She saw him walking around the dungeons. Why wasn't he at the feast? She saw him walking towards a door, and she heard the footsteps…tap…tap…tap…tap, tap, tap!"   
  
Tap, tap, tap! Beni frowned. What was going on, this had never happened before. She heard the noise inside the ball and in real life. She jumped up and opened the door as she realized what had happened. Snape walked into the room and glanced at the crystal ball, images of him standing in the room flashed across its smooth surface.   
  
Beni snapped the door shut. "Sorry to disturb you." He said.   
"No problem."   
"I thought you might be here. You weren't at the match."   
"I already knew what was going to happen."   
"Or at the feast." He pointed out. Beni thought it was either a very stupid statement or some kind of question.   
"Why would I want to go to the feast?"   
"For the food?"   
"Nah. The socializing." She said sarcastically. He smiled at her. She looked at him curiously, and then at the crystal ball. She was about to tell him what she was seeing, he was in the image after all, and the picture would have shocked her, had she not been so resilient to surprises.   
"Why don't we meet here again sometime?" he asked her. "I'd like to learn how to see." He indicated the crystal with a nod.   
  
"Yes, we will meet here again, and many times after." She said, gazing at the ball, "But you won't learn how to see. It's just not going to work for you." 


	3. Holes

Chapter 3: Holes  
  
Beni couldn't sleep. She sat up in her bed, and twisted around to look at Pansy's empty bed. Parkinson was still in the hospital wing getting her face fixed. Beni smiled; she didn't think it was possible to fix a face like Pansy's. At least she didn't have to put up with Pansy's constant snores at night; she had actually slept for a few hours over the last few nights.  
  
Her thoughts wondered to Severus. They were pretty good friends now, which was a really weird thing for Beni, who had never had friends before. She liked being alone, ignored and invisible. But somehow she liked Severus' attention. After her parents had died it had become harder for her to make friends. Every time she tried to introduce herself or someone tried to be friendly to her, she would suddenly lash out and say something nasty or intimidating. Afterwards she'd laugh in regret. It was scary, and she hated it. But that had never happened with Severus. Maybe it was because he was a little strange himself, or maybe it was because at first she had found him intimidating, and she knew that to lash out at him would just be...she smiled as she imagined it. He wasn't the type to take shit from anyone. They'd probably end up in a huge screaming match, or maybe not, Severus had a lot of self-control. But it didn't matter. She was glad that they were friends, she always welcomed his company, although she felt she was being deceived, he enjoyed her company too.  
  
The moon was shining on the chains that Beni usually wore around her neck, creating glints of silver across Beni's face. She sat up and wrapped them around her neck, and padlocked them together. She sighed. She felt so much more...protected, just less vulnerable to all the shit that people did and said to her. It was times like these that Beni hated, when she knew that somebody, somewhere, was dreaming of killing her, driving a knife through her fury-filled heart and laughing as her blood poured out over their hands and onto the mouldy, bone-covered floor...  
  
Feeling shaky from her thoughts, Beni climbed out of bed and tip-toed down to the dungeon where she now kept her crystal ball. She unlocked the door, and stepped inside, relocking it as she went. She gazed into the crystal and kept seeing a repeated image. She didn't like the image – Why? What was it about seeing it that really got to her?  
  
She scoffed. The crystal ball was telling her what her feelings were, because she was to blind to look into her heart and realize them herself. It wasn't wrong, but it just seemed so. She kicked the crystal to the other side of the room in utter distaste, and fell to the floor suddenly, where she slept.  
  
* * * * * "Beni. Beni! Wake up!" "ARRGH!!!" Beni screamed, turned around and slapped the person who was shaking her across the face, digging her nails into their skin, tearing at their eyeball. The person echoed her scream, only a scream of pain, not shock. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! Are you Ok?" she loudly and concernedly asked the man writhing on the floor in pain, suddenly conscious of her black, silk nightgown, her lack of underwear, and her chained and padlocked neck.  
  
The man groaned, Beni scrambled to her feet and discarded the chains around her neck. "Severus?" she asked tentatively. He stopped rolling on the floor and sat up. She crouched down in front of him and moved his hand away. It was difficult; he had it stuck to his face, presumably to numb the pain. She drew in a sharp breath when she saw the damage that she had done. "I'm so sorry." She whispered, biting her lip. He groaned in response. "Severus?"  
  
He seemed to be having trouble breathing. She brought herself to look back at his face. His cheek was streaked with three long gashes, blood pouring from them unceasingly, down his neck and into his robes, staining them repulsively. His eye was what scared her though. Her nails had punctured it in two places, and white goo dribbled from it slowly, mingling with the blood and the tears on his cheek. But it was his iris that scared her the most, it made the eye seem unharmed, and it was blood red, a mirrored image of Beni's own eyes when she got distressed.  
  
Beni didn't think she could take it anymore. The image of her feelings that she had seen in the crystal the night before had consumed her in its truth and taken over her. She began to cry, her eyes changing from lustrous silver to deep red. She drew his bleeding face to her shoulder, her tears cascading over the gashes on his face and pouring into the holes in his eyes. Suddenly he pushed her away, perhaps stronger than he had meant to, and she slammed against the closest wall, her head lolling around helplessly.  
  
She woke from unconsciousness with her face pressed to a bloodstained shoulder. She groaned. The person clutching her nimble shoulder released her from their comforting grip and let her relax against the wall. Her head ached insatiably; she slid down the wall until she was lying down comfortably. She opened her eyes. She was face to face with her crystal ball, which was playing those same images from her heart across its terrorizing surface.  
  
"It was the image again. She had not yet watched it all the way through, and still had no desire to do so, but being in the helpless situation that she was...she saw herself with Severus. She was laughing, they both were, and she was feeling something that she had never felt before...something that she couldn't identify, but at the same time she knew what it was. They were spinning around in the snow, and then they fell together, landing in the soft, puffy snowflakes, warm in each others arms..."  
  
She pushed it away, dried blood flaking off onto it from underneath her nails. She felt dizzy, overcome with a feeling of frustration. She shut her eyes, willing her sanity to come back. She didn't know where she was or who was sitting in front of her.  
  
She gulped down the boiling cold liquid that was being forced down her throat. Something told her that it would help; maybe it was a voice in her head, maybe someone real. She sat up; she was still in the dungeon, although it had changed slightly. The floor was flooded with blood, her crystal ball was also smeared with blood, lying neglected near the door, it's stand still prestigiously the tallest thing in the room. Her chains were lying in a corner and Severus was sitting in front of her, looking concerned, his face completely healed.  
  
"D...don't you have a class?" she asked him. He shook his head, hair falling into his black eyes. "It's the weekend." He whispered. Beni sat up, remembering everything that had happened since he had tried to wake her. "What time is it?" she asked him. "Ten. Are you hungry?" he pulled out his wand when she nodded. A small banquet appeared on a table between them, the delicious looking brunch set out on it's top. "Are you ok?" she asked him, her voice coarse and raspy. He smiled, shaking his head at her in disbelief. "I'm fine. Shouldn't you be asking me if you're the one that's ok?" he eyed her observantly. She was a mess, covered with blood, her hair knotted and her eyes big, red and puffy. "Am I ok?" she groaned, managing a small smile. He grinned. "You need to eat." He told her. They sat down at the table, eating furiously. Beni still felt sickened by the sight of his mangled face, and the thought of what she had done with just her bare hands.  
  
"People say you hate your job." She said, trying to move her thoughts forwards. It was an issue she'd overheard many times, and she wanted to clarify it with him. "What? Oh...the Potions Master thing. I thought you knew." He looked at her, surprised. She shook her head. "It's not my real job." He smiled at her reaction. "Oh. Then what is? I mean, what are you doing teaching?" she asked, millions of questions building up inside of her. "I work for Dumbledore, as a spy. Just like you will when you leave school. This is my 'undercover' job, if you like. I hate it, but what can you do?" he laughed a little. "It gets a bit much sometimes...trying to do two jobs at once, I'd rather teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, I know it back-to- front, but Dumbledore says it's too dangerous." He scowled, evidently pissed off. Beni still didn't understand, and she wanted to know more. She was also a little surprised that he knew her plans for becoming a spy herself. "How did you know I'm going to be a spy? What's wrong with teaching potions? What exactly do you do?" She asked, question spilling out fluently. He smiled. "I knew because they've already signed you up. Your job's guaranteed. Thought you'd like to hear that." He grinned at the expression of happiness on her face. "Potions...it's hard to teach...like I said, I have other preferences but because of my NEWT score in potions...I landed here. And you'll find out what I do when you leave here, I can't really tell you now." "Why not?" "It's classified." He answered sarcastically. "You'll know one day. Put it out of your mind for now." She gave him a dirty look, but took his advice. They sat in silence for a few minutes, Severus fretting about his work and Beni dreaming of leaving school and finally achieving her dream.  
  
"I'm sorry." She said quietly after a few moments, avoiding meeting his eyes. "For what?" he asked. Did he not remember or was he just slow, she wondered? "For what I did to you when you tried to wake me up." She said, avoiding eye contact. His face did not show any comprehension. "Oh." He said, as if he was trying very hard to remember something so that she wouldn't look so...stupid. "I kind of remember waking up and...you gave me a bit of a shock..." Beni rolled her eyes, he sounded really lame. "No, before that, you know, the whole nails and the eye and the cheek thing –"she said, making clawing motions at her own cheek to get the message across. She was beginning to feel stupid. What could she do to explain herself? Maybe she should just drop it.  
  
Her crystal ball began to flash. She slid off her seat and picked it up, placing it on its stand next to the table. It began to replay what happened while she was sleeping, and then it showed Severus coming in the door and trying to wake her. It was like watching a horror movie; the chilling thing was it had already happened.  
  
Beni looked away, at Severus. His eyes were wide opened as he watched the ball, evidently he could see the image being played across the screen too. It wasn't often that things like that happened. Beni wondered why the crystal was showing itself to Severus, when he said he could never see anything in it. He gasped and grimaced. Her eyes flew back to the ball, which was showing her nails digging into his eyeballs. "I get it now." He whispered quietly, one hand lifting involuntarily to his cheek. "But then how did it heal? What ha..." Beni shook her head. She had no idea how he had been miraculously healed. "Oh. Shit." She looked at him. "I know." He said in surprise. He looked at her, and nodded to the crystal. She looked at the vision it was showing of her tears rolling into his eyes and the gashes in his face. She still didn't get it; actually it was all a little embarrassing. "What is it?" she asked him. He was staring at the crystal, and then at her in a look of absolute awe. "Your tears...look." He said, nodding at the crystal, which was now showing her being thrust to the other side of the room. "Err..." what exactly was she meant to be seeing? How did that have anything to do with his face healing without a trace of a scratch or a scar? "Your tears. They must have healing properties. Don't you see?" he said in one big sighing, gasping, ingenious rhetorical question that Beni had no idea how to answer, so she just stayed quiet. He shook his head, and went back to his food.  
  
Beni stared at him. She suddenly felt strong gushes of attraction, watching the way he ate messily, his black hair falling into his eyes. She tried to shake the thoughts out of her head. He was her teacher, and her friend – this was wrong. Even if he was only a few years older than her, she still couldn't let these feelings in. She didn't dare think of the destruction they would do not only to her relationship with him but to her entire life.  
  
"I have to go." She said breathlessly, standing up quickly and moving towards the door. "Oh. Ok then but wait...hang on." A little surprised, he stood up and offered her his cloak. "What's that for?" she asked suspiciously. "Are you going to walk through the school like that?" he asked, nodding at her clingy nightgown. She flushed, and looked down at the ground. He held out his cloak again. "Thank you." She said, taking it and draping it over her shoulders.  
  
She walked quickly along the corridor. She was grateful that he didn't ask where she was going or why she had to leave so suddenly, but then it wasn't like him to pry. "Beni!" Beni turned around quickly. A group of people were walking towards her. She recognized Draco Malfoy with three other Slytherins, two Ravenclaws and four Hufflepuffs from her class.  
  
She heard one of the Ravenclaw students ask his friend, "What are we doing?" "Getting her for what she did to Parkinson. Look at this..." he showed his friend a bottle of purple liquid, which she assumed, obviously, was not good. "Where did you get that?" the first boy asked him, smirking. "Potter and Granger. They didn't want in on this personally, to scared of getting into trouble, but considerate enough to offer some help." The other boy said.  
  
"Beni Montano." Draco Malfoy said maliciously. He was at the head of the group and was now standing less than a meter away in front of her. Beni stayed quiet. This was not good, and the thought of the bottle was lurking in front of her thoughts too. Maybe she should run, but then she might be able to handle it. She thought of what she could do with her bare hands, what would the effects of a wand be?  
  
"Is that Professor Snape's cloak that you're wearing?" asked a girl from Hufflepuff. Beni instantly decided that to tell the truth would be like murder. "No." she said dully, looking bored and impatient. "Of course it's his." Said Draco. "Where else have you seen one like it?" He asked the group behind him like they were stupid, and at the same time putting a relieving finish to the topic. "We're not scared of you, Montano." Draco said, walking in slow, menacing circles around her. "That's nice." She said, wishing they would all just disappear.  
  
"We don't like you...in fact we hate you." He whispered, his eyes flashing. Her eyes turned red, she felt a kind of resistance kick in, and in an instant she had matched Draco's hate. "Really?" she asked sarcastically, her voice rising only a little.  
  
"We hate you enough to kill you, Montano." He said, still in deathly, chilling whispers. Beni would normally have been terrified, she knew what Draco could do to her, he could probably kill her with his own bare hands, but she felt a burning kind of power inside her, a kind of invincibility. "Potter get boring?" she asked him, her voice at normal volume, mockery weaving through her words. The group had formed a circle around her now, and Malfoy was still pacing circles around her. "Don't be a smart-ass Montano!" he yelled suddenly, thumping her over the head. His hand felt like a ball of steel, and she flew to the floor, landing on all fours, picking herself up quickly.  
  
She turned to face him, her feeling of immortality still not relenquishing. They looked at each other for three seconds, then flew at each other, both intending to tear the other into as many mall pieces as possible. Beni clawed at his face, but somehow he kept her away, receiving only a few nicks and cuts from her deadly nails. He tried to punch her, but she ducked and avoided them quickly, her reflexes were sharp.  
  
Beni, being a former student of a school that specialized in the dark arts, had a particular distaste and also distrust for muggle fighting, and reached for her wand. In her one second of distraction, Draco planted another heavy punch in her gut, sending her flying into the wall, the crowd parting to let her frail body smash against it. She opened her eyes, he was walking towards he, shoulder set and squared, but she stood up to face him, her pale, shaking hands clutching her wand. Blood poured from her mouth onto Severus' cloak, and more blood tricked from her forehead.  
  
She pointed her wand at him. She would make him pay, he would be so sorry. She would show him what she could really do. She screamed a curse at him, but she was too late, caught up in her thought of fury. The curse hit and onlooker, the friend of the boy with the bottle. The boy burst into flames for a few seconds, and then the flames disappeared, leaving his skin burnt black, dripping off his bones, mutilated, his face absolutely distorted, unrecognizable.  
  
But Draco had grabbed Beni by the scruff of the cloak and hurled her around to the opposite wall, the cloak tearing from her shoulders, her thrashing against the wall, naked but for her skimpy silk nightdress. Malevolent, pernicious laughter echoed off the walls and consumed her. Tears clouded her vision and each person there felt her shield of perpetuity disintegrate. Draco put his hands around her neck, and bought her body close to his. "Do you know what this is, Montano?" he turned her face towards the remaining Ravenclaw boy, who was holding out the bottle of purple liquid. The boys face was twisted with hate and pain, clearly he had taken the sour treatment of his friend harshly and personally. Beni tried to speak, but her lips only released a small, high-pitched moan. Draco's hands were not tight around her neck, but she couldn't move, she was completely under his control.  
  
"It is a poison, designed to work in similar ways to the Cruciatus curse. Only differences are, it lasts for exactly one hundred years. Imagine that Montano." He smirked and continued into the deadly silence. "Eternal pain, never death, because the Cruciatus curse won't kill you, just pain. That's all you are going to know for a hundred years. When the time is finished, you'll be old and twisted, you will die immediately, but it is said that even in death the drinker is tormented. The other difference is that because it isn't actually a curse, being cast by a particular person...there's no way to lift the poison; no one can even kill you to put you out of your misery! There is one way...a counter potion. There is one particularly difficult ingredient that one needs to obtain to make it, which is why the maker of this potion," he nodded t the purple bottle, " did not make the counter potion to accompany it, which is illegal but, seeing as it's Granger and Potter, these things slip the minds of the people who...matter. So! Are you ready?" he asked her.  
  
Beni squirmed. Draco took the potion. Beni twisted her small body, trying desperately to get away. Draco was having trouble restraining her and poisoning her at the same time. He nodded at an onlooker to help him. A girl came forward, and grabbed Beni's wrists. The girl screamed and backed away, the skin dissolved from her hands and blood poured from them, her insides emptying themselves through her hands. She ran screaming down the corridor, towards the hospital wing.  
  
Draco grabbed a knife being held out to him from a Slytherin boy and plunged it into Beni's side, she shrieked, her writhing ceased and Draco poured the freezing purple liquid down her throat. The knife clattered to the floor. Beni swallowed the last of the liquid and Draco pushed her away from him. She felt nothing but the pain in her side. She shuffled backwards, away from the anxious, anticipating group, all of whom had their eyes glued to her, waiting for some kind of reaction. 


	4. Bitter Rejection

Bitter Rejection   
  
Suddenly the purple liquid began to pour excessively, unceasingly from the hole in her side. Still she felt no eternal pain. She looked at the faces of the people in the group, each one wearing a look of utter shock and horror. Beni turned and ran down the corridor, back towards the dungeons, leaving a river of purple behind her.   
  
Beni burst into Snape's office, gasping for breath. He chocked on the beverage he was sipping, threw a glance at the headmaster who was sitting next to him and rushed to her side, the headmaster at his heels. Beni cringed to think of the conversation she had interrupted, but she needed help. She didn't know what was happening, and worst of all she had never heard of this potion before, which was odd, she should have studied it at school. Snape and Dumbledore however, must have known what it was from the looks on their faces. They laid her down on the desk, poured more potions down her throat that that didn't come pouring out of the hole in her side. When the flow of purple liquid stopped and had been replaced by blood they muttered words to heal the wound in her side conjured up a small bed and left her in the office to rest.   
  
* * * * *   
  
Beni woke up where they had left her. She glanced at the clock on the desk, and realised she had been sleeping for two days. She sat up and swung her long, slender legs over the side of the bed, and stood on the cold stone floor. She found her wand on the desk and transfigured a quill into a hairbrush. She spent thirty minutes brushing out her extremely knotty hair, with help from her wand as well. She found a cloak on the wall and wrapped it around herself; it was excruciatingly cold in Snape's office. She took the opportunity to have a look around.   
  
She sat down at the high-backed chair of his desk. Bottles of ink, bundles of quills and piles of parchment covered the dark wooden desk. She bent down and opened the top drawer on the right hand side of the desk. It was filled with class plans for his first, second, third and fourth years. The drawer below that was filled with class plans for his OWL class and his sixth years and the bottom drawer was filled with the plans and assignments for his NEWT class. She moved over to the left hand side of his desk. The top drawer was filled with letters. She flicked through a couple. A lot of them were from Dumbledore and Fudge, she assumed they concerned his work. The second drawer was also filled with letters and had files in it too. The letters were all from people whose names she recognized – death eaters. She slammed it shut quickly, feeling a burning sensation in her stomach.   
  
Feeling sick she left the bottom drawer alone, and moved clumsily to the bookshelves facing the desk. She found it strange at first that Severus had no photos of his family around his office, but then remembered the terrorizing vision of his childhood that she had seen in her crystal ball a few nights ago. She scanned the spines of the books – they were all thick volumes full of complex potion recipes. She got a funny feeling that there wasn't just a plain brick wall behind that bookshelf – a secret lab perhaps, but she didn't want to pry that much.   
  
She moved past heavily locked entrance to his office to stare at the large cabinet that dominated the left hand wall of the room. On top of the cabinet were open shelves filled with glass jars containing various types of floating objects. Beni recognized most of them from her studies at her old school. The cupboard doors at the bottom of the cabinet were chained and padlocked shut – she assumed this was his private stores.   
  
She crossed to the back wall of the room, which was completely bare except for a tall, prestigious, almost domineering wardrobe type box, which radiated an aura of secrecy. Beni could sense the powers of the excessive locking charms placed upon it, this she knew was where Severus kept the more personal things concerning his confidential occupation. Next to the cabinet was a set of black, twirling stairs that could only lead to one place – his bedroom.   
  
Cautiously, warily, discreetly she proceeded to climb the staircase. She found the heavy, black door at the top unlocked, and pushed it open. His room was simple. Almost everything was drab – the grey stone of the walls, floor and roof and the black of his wardrobe, the small desk in the corner and the large couch against the back wall where he lay - fully clothed, in a deep sleep. A Nundu skin lay in the centre of the room. Beni moved onto it, feeling the furry skin of the monster under her bare feet. The she moved to sit down in front of Severus, his cloak around her protecting her from the deathly cold of the stone floor.   
  
She brushed his medium length, dark, matted hair out of his eyes, and lightly touched his cold cheek to wake him. He stirred slowly and opened his eyes.   
"Beni." He croaked her name, "W…What are you doing up here?" He sat up quickly. She felt it might be wrong, being in his bedroom and all.   
"I should go – I came to tell…oh – I'll tell you later, I should – I'll go." She stammered, standing up with a jolt and moving quickly towards the door. Severus jumped up and pulled her back, one hand gripping her arm just below her elbow, and the other hand firmly gripping her waist. He steered her back to the dark, tattered couch that was obviously his bed, and motioned for her to sit down, now seeming a little embarrassed of his untidy, drab living space. He sat down beside her, feeling a little awkward at first – no one but himself, and often a post owl ever came into this room, but Beni was one of his best friends, one of his only friends, so he loosened up after a moment.   
  
"What did you have to tell me?" he asked her gently. Beni sighed deeply.   
  
She knew she needed to tell him; in herself she couldn't stand it any longer. The feelings needed to be freed.   
  
"I think I'm in love." She said hesitantly, biting her bottom lip in uncertainty.   
  
"With who?" he asked, surprised and feeling a strange jolt run through his gut.   
  
"You." She said simply, her voice full of a dull anxiety. Severus gaped at her, undecided as to what to say to her sudden, unexpected confession.   
  
"I'm sorry." She said quietly, avoiding his eyes, almost shameful.   
  
"Beni…how can this happen?" He asked her. She couldn't pinpoint whether his tone was irritable, exasperated or aggravated.   
  
"I'm sorry." She said again.   
  
"What do you want me to say?" he asked her, suspicious and confused.   
  
"I don't know Severus!" she moaned, "Something! Anything!" her voice a desperate cry.   
  
"Beni…I – just…don't under – I don't know…what, I mean – " Severus stammered. He seemed to be having trouble coming to terms with what Beni was saying.   
  
"What am I, I mean – what are we going to do?" she asked helplessly.   
  
"Oh my God! How can you do this?" He yelled at her, although his sudden aggressiveness didn't affect her.   
  
"I needed to tell you how I felt, Severus! Wouldn't you have done the same?" she yelled back at him, matching his temper and the volume of his voice.   
  
"NO!" he yelled, his black eyes flashing.   
  
"People can't keep their feelings hidden forever!" Beni screamed at him, she thought he would have reacted differently, she had admittedly expected him to feel the same, but if not she hadn't expected him to be this way about it.   
  
"Yes they can Beni! They can if their feelings SHOULD be kept hidden!" He yelled, feeling incredibly out-of-place, this was a new experience for him.   
  
"What's so wrong with my feelings?" she whined loudly, feeling her eyes flash red and the tears welling up behind her eyelids.   
  
"I'm…I'm a teacher and you're…a student…I" he spluttered loudly, feeling a little pathetic.   
  
"Severus! We're only a few years apart!" Beni yelled at him, willing him to stop saying the things he was, she wished he would just shut up and agree with her, but this was Severus she was dealing with.   
  
"Did you actually think that this would go anywhere?!" he continued to yell at her.   
  
"What do you mean?" she asked him, completely distressed, the colour of her eyes now a perfect mirror of blood.   
  
"Can you imagine if we began dating? The things people would say?!" He said, looking completely insane.   
  
"PEOPLE WOULDN'T HAVE TO KNOW!" she screamed at him, realising he must be embarrassed about it. She was about to walk out, although she felt like hitting him as hard as she could for being such a bastard. She did think the better of that idea though; she honestly didn't think anyone could take Severus down.   
  
"PEOPLE WOULD FIND OUT, BENI!" he yelled, wishing that she would just leave.   
  
"Why are you so worried about what other people think all of a sudden, Severus?!" She shrieked, tears pouring down her pale cheeks.   
  
"Because people are going to think and say dirty things, and that's what makes it seem so wrong!" He explained, lowering his voice slightly, knowing that he was offending her.   
  
"Fine." She sighed, finally giving in, "If you're going to be that way about it, just forget it!" she said bitterly, through gritted teeth.   
  
"WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY?! HOW ELSE IS THERE TO REACT, BENI?! I'M THE ONE BEING REALISIC HERE!!" He hollered at the fragile figure in front of him, although she stood her ground well.   
  
"Fine! Just you be realistic. Forget it, Severus!" she said in a deathly quiet voice that did not show her tears. She wished she was dead, no, she wished she was dying slowly…painfully. She turned briskly and stalked towards the door.   
  
"BENI! COME BACK HERE!" he roared at her, willing everything that had just happened to be a dream, he wished it had never happened.   
  
Beni slammed the door of his bedroom shut, walked lightly down the stairs and threw his cloak on the floor, the thick folds of cotton immediately absorbing the dampness on the ground. She slammed the office door shut, the walls around her vibrating from the force and the inertia.   
  
"Beni! Wait!" he cried after her, almost glad that no one was there to hear the tears and the desperation in his voice, the smooth, deep manliness in it gone haywire. He stood, stunned, in the middle of the room.   
  
* * * * *   
Beni stormed through the corridor. She knew she shouldn't have done it, but it had seemed inevitable…until now. She wanted to disappear, to hide away in some dark corner where no one could ever find her. She turned a corner and came face to face with a large mirror.   
  
She stared at herself, at her long, now brushed, black hair, her cold, pale skin and her flashing silver eyes. She scowled, and wished she had a cloak or something to hide her nightdress. It was clingy, black and almost see-through. She wasn't wearing anything underneath it either, and the top of the dress, just above her breasts was made of lace.   
  
She hurried down the corridor and into the Slytherin common room, stalking in the shadows, out of people's eyesight. It was fairly empty, because it was early Monday morning, and she slipped through un-noticed. She hurried to her bed and dressed quickly. She wasn't hungry, so she skipped breakfast, taking refuge in the library instead.

When the bell rang for first period, she stayed in the library, hidden in her own safe, protective corner. She didn't feel like going to second period either, but the library was boring her. She got up and wondered around empty corridors, staring at the pictures, trying not to think of reality.

She turned a corner and inevitably, there was her class, all of them facing her with their hands behind their backs. They smiled malignantly when they saw her, like they had been waiting for her. She quickly observed the fact that there was no teacher present. Malfoy and his little 'gang', who were standing at the front of the group, began to walk towards her.

She had immensely strong impulses to turn and run and never look back, but once again she stood her ground. A second later she knew she should have trusted her instincts and gone with the former action, because Goyle grabbed both of her wrists and twisted her hands behind her back, and drove her into the wall. Her head smashed against it, and she felt a tiny line of blood trickle down her face right next to her eye.

Then the rest of the class advanced upon her, and began to spray her with deodorant, and throw small buckets of petroleum at her. She squirmed and screamed, trying to bite Goyle's arm so that she could get free. It was only so predictable what they were about to do, but escape was not a current option.

Malfoy and Potter, who had both disappeared for a few seconds returned, pouring a huge drum of petrol over her head, soaking her hair and her clothes. She shut her eyes tightly and held her breath, trying to block the foul liquid out of her senses.

Then Goyle let her go, and it seemed like everyone was moving away from her. She took a breathe, and slowly let it out in a sigh of relief. She looked around and realised that the people moving away were also covered with spots of petrol. Then Granger stepped forward. Beni winced as she realised that even though Potter and his friends hated Malfoy and his friends, so much that each wished the other to be damned to the depths of hell for all eternity, they could still join forces to try and rid themselves of Beni.

Granger pointed her wand at Beni, who glared back her. Whatever Granger had to do to her was probably no worse than something that had already happened to Beni. They were Beni's last thoughts before a long, thin, jagged flame came flying from Hermione's wand towards her, and immediately caught the deodorants and petroleum that covered her.

They watched as Beni was consumed in flames, as she fell to the floor, screaming. A terrified, painful, blood freezing scream, they caught sight of her face every so often as the flames thinned. Her eyes were wide open, the silver colour so distinguishable through the flames. Her moth open in one long, never ending scream. Her pale skin darkening, burning and curling before their eyes, each millisecond that they watched her seemed like an hour.

Beni panicked at first, but when she fell to the floor and began to roll around, trying to smother the flames, she had realised she would burn to death even quicker if she kept it up. She reached into her robes, expecting to find ash instead of her wand, but it was still there, melting more than burning in the heat.

She quickly muttered a freezing spell, using a mixture of ice, snow and water to kill the flames. The class dispersed with groans of disappointment, while Beni lay groaning on the floor in pain. After a while she picked herself up and limped to the nearest bathroom.  
  
She quickly walked to the mirror. She looked at herself, to see the damage that the fire had done. The end of her hair was burnt severely, and was now hung around her lower rib-cage area, instead of below her backside. The skin on her face was not burnt as badly as she had expected it to be, but the skin on her legs was black, in some spots it even had a blue tinge to it, and looked as if she was rotting. And her arms - when she looked at her arms she was forced to look away quickly. The skin was not black, but red raw, and hung from her arms as if it were dripping from her.

She used her wand to fix it up, and to heal her various other wounds. She sat in front of the mirror hating everything around her. She hated her class. She hated this school and it's teachers. She hated the world. She hated everyone. She hated life, and she hated herself.


	5. Forever Alone

Disclaimer: Once again, all characters, excluding only Beni, are property of J K Rowling, as is the idea of Hogwarts and relative Hogwarts events.

Chapter 5 : **Forever Alone**

Beni sat on the edge of the sink in the girls bathroom. Her clothes were torn and burnt from the flames, and her hair was disgusting - wet, greasy and matted, burnt at the ends where it had been melted and split. Her arms and legs looked somewhat better, but the pain was insatiable. Tears welled behind her eyes.

She thought of her parents…she had felt so insecure, so un-protected, so unloved since their death. The feeling of neglection and being alone had increased to a point of craziness. How could she face the harsh bitch that was life feeling that way?

She thought of the way that everybody hated her, the way she just kept taking all of their shit, time after time. It was like being stabbed in the heart over and over again, the blood was her pain, surrounding her like an aura, penetrating her mind, consuming her.

She felt completely insane. She knew she had kept her hate, her hurt and her anger inside herself too long…

Her eyes travelled along the edge of the wall facing her, past the mould filled corners and to where the knife she had used to scrape the gum off her skin lay discarded.

She crawled over to it and clutched the cold, steel handle in her shaking, pale fist. Tears flowed from her eyes, down her soft, pink cheeks and onto a slowly enlarging pile of water on the filthy floor.

She sat there rocking backwards and forwards, trying to retain the sick feeling in her stomach, whispering lost thoughts that flew through her mind.

The tears began to pour down her cheeks faster and faster, her heart thumped and adrenaline raced through her body, making her feel sick from the pressure. Her hands and legs shook violently, her mind blanking out and quickly coming to life again.

She felt the feelings inside her burn and swirl around, making her heave with sickness, they were bubbling in her stomach like water being boiled. She felt them well up inside her, deranging her, pushing their way up outside of her, ready to burst - hate, anger, hurt, pain, bitterness, and loneliness.

Screaming and sobbing hysterically at he same time, Beni raised the knife above her head, shut her eyes, and losing herself in her own insanity, she bought the knife down upon herself in one quick swipe.

It slashed her upturned wrist, making a deep, jagged cut across her pale skin. Blood spurted from the gash and fell to the floor, mingling with her tears, the puddle reflecting her face, screwed up in pain, watching her own blood spill and flow onto the floor…

She wanted to find a way to escape everything. A way to stop hating herself, her life and everything around her. A way to find peace.

She thought of death. She so badly wanted to die, to escape, to leave and to get away from it all. Even hell would be better than this life. When she was dead, she wouldn't have these feelings inside her, eating away at her spirit.

She wouldn't have to live with this haunting nightmare, this terror - herself.

She slashed her wrist once more, realising that she wasn't strong enough to do this. How could she take her own sad, sick life? The one thing she still had to lose…could she take it herself?

She dropped the knife, opened her eyes returning to the reality. She looked up, past the roof and into the heavens, and screamed to the darkness - 

"WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT TO MY LIFE?! WHAT'S THE GOD DAMN FUCKING POINT!? TELL ME!! WHY AM I EVEN HERE?!"

"ALL I DO IN THIS FUCKING NIGHTMARE IS HURT AND HATE AND FEAR!! ALL MY STREAMING BLOOD DOES IS SPREAD THIS FUCKING PAIN!!"

"I can't be saved, no one answers, I'm alone…always alone…" she whispered to herself, rocking backwards and forwards again.

"I will fall…in memory of myself- I will rest in HELL!!" she whispered fiercely, her bitter tears twisting and warping her voice.

She trust the knife aside and stood up. She had no strength left, she felt as though her spirit had already left her, and she knew her soul had died years ago.

She felt so fragile, but the insane feeling inside her was her strength.

She could do it. She would do it.

She tore down a massive plank of wood from the wall and began to fill up the bathtub at the end of the bathroom, blood spilling from her wrist interminably, creating trails wherever she walked. She placed a series of the heaviest locking charms she knew on the door and waited patiently until the bathtub was over flowing with water.

She pulled half of the board over the top of the tub, water spilling out generously, mixing with her blood. She threw her wand over her shoulder, then she climbed in, shaking.

She slid under the board, pulling the other end over the other side of the tub with difficulty, soon completely covering it. She smiled into the empty eeriness of the water. This time there was no escape for her…the board was holding her down, preventing her from contact with air, denying her life.

She lay there calmly…waiting, waiting, screaming from the inside, consumed in the insanity of her own pain and hate.

Beni began to panic suddenly, she rolled over to face the bottom of the bathtub, and began to scratch at its hard, porcelain walls.

And then it began. What she had dreamed of as the key to her eternal peace was only a way to infinate suffering.

She needed to breathe - for some wild reason she wanted to breathe, to scream regret, she still had hope after everything, and now it was too late - 

She opened her mouth to let the air run into her lungs, but she only got water, water gushed into her mouth, down her airway and into her lungs. She began to cough, her tiny body bumping against the heavy board above her, trapping her from life. 

She felt faint, small, so insignificant…she didn't even feel real, but she knew she wasn't dead - death was staring her in the face, telling her there was only so much longer she could resist…

And then her body sank to the bottom of the tub with a dull thump, her hair floating above her in the water, moving with the ripples, her silver eyes wide open, her heart closed.

… …

From somewhere in the distance of that bathroom came a huge crash, like an echo of the thump when Beni had hit the bottom of the tub, only louder, followed by a series of severe splintering sounds, wood breaking from the inertia of being thrust into the air and finally making contact with something else…

Beni coughed and gasped, the air finally rushing into her frail lungs, her shaking body came clean out of the water, blood dripping gently from her wrist.

Then she passed out in the strong arms around her, falling slowly into sleep - and only a temporary peace.

* * * * *

He had been so tormented since that morning, when he had realised. Everywhere he had gone he had not been able to rid her from his thoughts. 

He had tried everything to stop it, and then he had understood that he didn't want it to stop. He had run, fighting an unknown reason against time to the place that she dwelled in most, he had burst into the room, half of her name spilling from his mouth and then the sound dying as he saw…

He saw her there, reflected on the surface of the ball, that face that had come to haunt him, screwed up in pain, tears flowing fast down her pretty cheeks, flowing and falling unceasingly to the puddle on the ground, the puddle of tears swirling rapidly, mixing with blood…

Comprehension dawned upon him quickly and he flew, shaking, drastic…the next moments in his life a blur, a denial of memory, and suddenly she was in his arms, shaking, weak and frail, wet and covered with blood, radiating pain, but safe and alive.

A/N: Wow. I hope you enjoy this chapter, although what there is to enjoy about it I'm not entirely sure…but I would like to dedicate the mushy-sweet end of the chapter to one of my best friends, Sam R - my non-lesbian-romantic-inspiration.


	6. Floating Visions

Disclaimer : All characters and ideas from the book belong to J. K. Rowling.

Chapter 6 : **Floating Visions**

Beni opened her eyes slowly, sitting up. She didn't know where she was or what had happened to her. The last thing that she remembered was water, lots of water, consuming her - overtaking her…

It was only when she looked down and she the two deep, brown gashes on her arm showing through white bandages that she remembered what had happened. She cast her eyes downwards. It seemed like some kind of a crime for her to look up, she felt as if she didn't deserve to.

She looked at her legs, blue and bruised from suffocation and her pathetic attempts to escape the hell she had bought upon herself. She stood up and looked around the room. It was drab and plain, a small desk in the corner, a tiny black wardrobe, a Nundu skin on the floor…she whipped around, disbelieving. The bed she had been lying on was a couch. What was she doing here again? She scowled. She didn't want to be here, in this room that hid so many hopeless memories.

She pulled on her cloak which she conveniently found on the end of the couch and stormed down the stairs, into the office and straight towards the door.

"Beni!" a surprised voice said from behind her. She whipped around. She knew that voice, and she told herself that she hated it.

There he was, sitting at the high backed chair to his desk, looking frustrated.

"What?" she growled at him. Her tone must have been harsher than he had expected, because for a few seconds he looked offended and awkward.

"I just…wondered…how you were doing?" he asked nervously. 

She glanced questioningly at the cuts, burns, bruises and feral colouring of her skin, and the various other injuries she had acquired the day before. She thought the answer to his question was obvious to anyone, so she gave him the filthiest look she could twist her face into and stalked out of the room, leaving him staring after her back once again, soundlessly mouthing lost words.

She went to the dungeon where she kept her crystal ball, locked the door again behind herself and took the haunted black ball of it's fancy, antique, golden stand. She hadn't seen in what seemed like ages. She sat cross-legged on the cold, stone floor and placed the ball in front of her.

__

She looked as deep as she could into the crystal, but for once she didn't see anything. Only one image began to play across the dark surface. She watched intently as it replayed Severus breaking through the onerously locked door or the women's bathroom, his cloak swishing around him, his face set in utter determination and anxiety, the atmosphere surrounding him distinct with a sudden force of power that radiated from him. He strode straight to the porcelain bathtub at the end of the room and threw the wooden board off with an immense strength that Beni would never dreamed that Severus possessed. The board flew through the air and hit the wall behind with a splintering crash, and Severus pulled Beni up, out of the water and into his arms, her face resting on his shoulder, fast, sharp, hoarse breaths suddenly coming from her frozen, shaking body.

Beni stood up, grabbed her wand and blasted the crystal ball into trillions of tiny pieces of glass, which defied gravity and kept flying through the air as if she were in space. She conjured herself a chair and sat down to think, tiny pieces of glass floating through the air, a perfect mirror of her feral temper.

So Severus had saved her. That explained why she had ended up in his bedroom again. Great, and she'd been such a bitch to him that morning. But then he'd been a dumb ass, "_How was she doing?"_ How the fuck did he think she'd be doing? She sighed. She should probably go and apologise and then…thank him. She cringed. Thankyou's and sorry's were like goodbye's…all so bloody hard to say.

She slammed the door shut and stormed back into his office. He was still sitting at his desk, looking even more frustrated about whatever he was working on, such a great time to interrupt him. He looked up in surprise as she entered the office.

"Sorry. And thankyou." She said loudly and abruptly. Before he could start to speak, she whipped around, he robes swishing much the way his did, and she stalked away quickly, this time leaving him smiling after her back and shaking his head.

He got up and walked after her, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around to face him. He couldn't think of anything to say to her so he led her to the dungeon where they used to sit together. He walked in and found the room filled with bits of flying black glass. He glanced at Beni, realising that she must have done this, and waved his wand, the pieces of glass falling to the floor.

He crossed to the room and flopped down into the chair, looking up to find the pieces of glass in the air again. Beni stood leaning against the opposite wall, twirling her wand in her fingers, staring at the doorway looking distant. Severus waved his wand and no sooner had the glass hit the ground than it flew up in the air again. He glared at Beni, who was no longer looking distant but smirking evilly and mischievously, still staring at the door. 

"Leave it." Severus snapped at her, the glass falling to the floor once more. She glared at him and turned to face him, her smirk now twisted into a look of distaste. She sighed and raised her eyebrows at him questioningly, trying to prompt him. He must have brought her here for a reason, and she wished he just get it over and done with, she'd rather not be here at all.

"What were you trying to do yesterday?" he asked her angrily.

"Is that rhetorical?" she asked him back.

"No."

"Well, what did it look like I was trying to do, Severus?" she said sarcastically.

"Why?" he asked, suddenly becoming a master of one word sentences.

"Give me one reason I should keep living."

"There are lots of reasons."

"Name one." she said sourly, sure that he would be lost for words, and her point would be proven.

"Although the people that you loved the most are dead, their expectations are not." he quipped bitterly. He stood up, waved his wand and the tiny pieces of glass on the floor flew back into the familiar smooth, sphere shape, and he left the room. This time it was Beni who was left standing stupidly, staring after him.

"Severus!" she called after him, beginning to run towards him. He turned around slowly and she flew into his arms, he stumbled backwards and almost fell over in shock. He hugged her back.

"Thankyou." she whispered into his ear. It wasn't a passionate or romantic hug, just a friendly hug, and it said all the thankyou's and sorry's that Beni needed it to.

* * * * *

They sat together again on the dungeon floor, Beni's newly reconstructed crystal ball in front of them both. It was one of those times when they just sat the talking, the crystal between them forgotten. He told her about his time at Hogwarts, and she found it was not dissimilar from her own. She laughed at the way he told her things, she loved his sarcasm and his bitterness, and he didn't mind.

He left a while later to teach a class, leaving Beni alone. She felt the crystal calling her, so before it could make her do something crazy and embarrassing, she looked down at it, staring into the depths of it's empty darkness, feeling her weight lighten and the familiar, strange, mystic feeling come over her.

__

Beni saw a girl. The girl was walking barefoot in the snow. In a big, open field of snow. Thick pine trees surrounded the field, and rocks were scattered across it, half hidden in the snow. The girl was young, she looked as though she had just turned fourteen. She was tall, with pale white skin. She had long, brunette hair with a faint wave through it. A fringe covered the left side of her face, falling into one of her eyes, which were blue, with yellow around the pupil. Light freckles covered the lower half of her face. Long, green earrings hung from her ears, brushing her shoulders. She wore a loose fitted green dress, which moved around her in the harsh, cold wind. The girl kept walking, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Through the girls eyes, Beni glanced at a rock on her right, and suddenly the rock dimmed, and a pair of eyes opened suddenly where the rock had been seconds before.

Beni jumped violently, cutting the vision short. Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano. That was not a normal vision. It was more like a dream than a vision. She had a strange feeling to accompany the confusion the vision had brought. It was a feeling of anticipation, anxiety and doom, and most prominently, awareness. 

Beni sat thinking about the vision all night. Who was the girl? Did she even mean anything? What was with the snowy field, and the trees? And the rock? That had really freaked her out, the way it had suddenly faded and those eyes had opened on it so quickly. They had scared her so much, just the abrupt unexpectedness of them. She hadn't even seen what the eyes looked like, not the shape, the colour - nothing. But they still freaked her out - severely. The eyes and the girls bare feet in the snow were the two most distinct things in the entire vision, and they stayed with Beni, haunting her, until her next vision.

For some reason she didn't tell anyone about it. She was trying to forget it herself, but she couldn't. She didn't even tell Severus, although she knew he could tell that something was different about her.

Beni returned to classes after that, and most everything went back to normal. Teachers pretended that she did not exist to be more than an irritating shadow, the other students still laughed at her from behind her back, but most of them were scared of her, or just couldn't be bothered anymore. Even Draco Malfoy had quit his little games and returned to tormenting Potter. For that, Beni was grateful.

But the vision didn't leave her. It never changed. It tortured her and haunted her. No matter how hard she tried to forget it, to push it aside, it would never rest. Maybe she had to understand what it meant, what it was trying to tell her. And that was as impossible of ridding her tormented mind of the vision itself.


	7. Haunted by Truth

Disclaimer: All characters and contexts from the Harry Potter books belong to J.K. Rowling.

A/N: Ok, this is one of the most boring, confusing, pointless pieces I have ever written, but unfortunately this chapter is kind of essential for the ending to work. So I am really sorry for anyone who has been looking forward to this - you're going to suffer a severe disappointment. I also developed a strong case of writer's block halfway through the first page, so my apologies again for the crapness of this chapter.

Chapter 7 : **Haunted by Truth**

__

The girl was running in the snow, in a big open field of snow…flash…pine trees were around her…the more she ran the more densely gathered the trees became…flash…she pushed branches out of the way as they grabbed her hair, which was flying in every direction, caught in the wind…flash…She tripped over a rock…flash…she picked herself up and kept running, too scared to focus on any of the rocks, because she knew what terror lurked within…flash…another vision kept flashing into her mind as she ran, terrified, through the forest of pine trees, soft, white snow flying out from under her feet and landing in the ground behind her with crashes like thunder.

There was a room. A cold, dark, empty room made of stone…no doors, no windows. The room was damp, and haunted thoughts echoed off the walls, chilling screams of doom penetrated the atmosphere…and on the mouldy, blood strewn floor was a boy. He was curled up in a corner, hiding from the light. This vision came in a haze of red, stayed for a second and disappeared once more, being replaced with the vision of Beni running hastily through the trees, but never getting anywhere.

Suddenly Beni was the girl, running rapidly through the trees, occasionally tripping over, always to scared to look at the rocks…too scared of the eyes…and then she tripped again, landing on the ground heavily, bouncing back up into the air and then landing again, sliding along the snow, screaming, her head hit a rock and lolled hopelessly. She rolled over and came face to face with the eyes once more. They opened, and Beni backed away screaming and crying, pain piercing her heart. The eyes opened…

They were midnight red, darker than blood, almost black, there was no pupil, no iris, not even a trace of white…the red eyes were surrounded by black…endless, consuming blackness…

Beni sat up, puffing. She climbed out of bed and crossed to the window in her dorm, where she sat, staring out onto the Hogwarts grounds. What had that dream been about? Did it have anything to do with the vision she had seen the day before, or was she just dreaming _about _the vision?

She didn't know, and the lack of knowledge frustrated her. She looked carefully over the Hogwarts grounds, staring shrewdly at any of the rocks she could see. Why rocks? What was with the rocks? 

No eyes appeared on the rocks, just as Beni had expected. It was probably some dumb nightmare…she turned and stalked away from the window, as the winter's first tiny snowflake landed on the glass.

She sat on her bed reading until the morning, when everybody else woke to a light snow. She glared silently at the other girls in her dorm as they attempted to move past her inconspicuously on their way down to breakfast. When they had all gone, Beni retrieved her book from underneath her bed and began reading again. Her mother had given her the thick, leather bound book when Beni was younger, and she had never needed to consult it before now. It was like a dream book, it helped to interpret indistinguishable or hidden meanings in visions, and in this case, Beni's dream.

She looked over the yellowing pages for hours, but everything seemed so vague - the things in the dream and the answers the book gave her. Agitated, she slammed the book shut and threw it into her trunk, storming out of the dorm.

She went to the dungeon where her crystal ball was, the atmosphere heavy with the sick feeling of dread. She moved further into the room, depression settling in over her heart. She sat down on the stone floor, ignoring the coldness. She stared at the crystal, and again she only saw the one vision - nothing else. Nothing in the future, the present or the past, not the usual variety of visions she saw - just one, dark, chilling picture looming against the glass.

__

She saw the boy in the room again, he didn't move, he didn't utter a sound, he didn't appear to be breathing - but he was alive. Beni hated that room, that disgusting, cold, mouldy room that generated a sense of hurt, hatred and blind fury.

Abruptly, she saw the girl once more, running ever faster across the snow. She didn't need to focus on the rocks to see the eyes, the blood red, glaring eyes, they stared at her from everywhere now, haunting her, following her, the constant drone that escaped their invisible bodies chasing her…

She finally approached a castle, ancient and domineering, the one she recognised to be Hogwarts. The girl pushed open the huge wooden doors and stepped into the entrance hall, the eyes disappearing unexpectedly, but the drone followed her.

Beni watched as the girl walked down a corridor, her heart thumped as she looked through the girls eyes. The corridor was dark, blackness was everywhere, consuming everything…the atmosphere was stuffy, combined with the blackness, it was hard to breathe, hard to hear, to see and to feel…but the girl kept walking, she didn't blink, she made no small movements, just kept walking…all of the feelings of anger, frustration, irritation and agitation multiplied in this corridor, filling the darkness, yet it was still empty, screaming into the girls ears, yet everything was quiet, scratching and tearing at her, yet she felt nothing…

The girl turned a sudden corner and began to walk down the next corridor, gliding slowly down the rough, uneven pathway. A green glow illuminated her way, filling the crevices in the walls and the floor, penetrating…hate…the sour, bitter hate swirled through the green light, dancing beautifully like wisps of silvery smoke. The dull thump of the girls heart beat sped up, creating a fast paced, uneven rhythm, sounding like thunder as it swelled against the walls and clashed with the hate, the green light hiding all…and still the girl walked forward, terrified, fear increasing with each involuntary step she took…

Once more she turned a sharp corner, it was like walking through a hot bubble of water, for a split second everything was white and calm, and then she stepped into the next corridor, a blinding red light hitting her, she fell to the ground, clutching helplessly at her heart and neck, pain overtaking her body, her silent screams somehow matching the climax of the cursed screams that echoed off the walls, filling her ears, causing more pain.

She crawled powerlessly, futile and forlorn over the cold stone floor, an acute match to the floor that Beni sat frozen upon as she watched, feeling the girl's pain ruthlessly attacking her, watching as the girl continued to scream silently, one long, continuous scream, as she crawled along the ground…her tears of pain falling constantly, no longer suppressing the hurt inside…

The girl stopped at a door halfway down the horror-filled corridor, stood up shakily and turned the handle, falling inside. She looked around, the room was made of stone, there were no windows, hence there was no light, only darkness…the dampness mingled with mould, it was disgusting, cold and eerie, blood covered the floor. The girl shuddered as a gush of the air from the room hit her, making the door slam shut behind her, her ears suddenly open to the screams of doom that pierced the emptiness. 

Her eyes travelled around the room, and she found a boy, coiled in a dark, putrid corner. The girl stared at the boy - there was something familiar about him. Suddenly, the boy turned to face her, and his eyes opened. The girl screamed, the sight of his eyes mortifying her - his eyes were midnight red, no pupil, no iris - not even a trace of white, staring at her…

And then blood spurted from his eyes, showing the floor, mingling with her screams, the blood poured down his face, dripping off the walls…

Constantly dripping, the pace increasing, faster and faster, a thunderous heartbeat, enveloping them both, as well as the girls screams, and the blood from the boys eyes quietly suffocating her…silencing her screams…and then the girl realised who the boy was, just as Beni realised what everything meant.

Beni and the girl fell to the floor simultaneously, both unconscious, the truth haunting them both…

* * * * *

Beni woke face down in the snow, the vision still playing itself over in her mind. She couldn't remember how she got from the dungeon to the snow covered field next to the quidditch pitch, or how long she'd been lying there in the snow. She picked herself up, brushing the snow from her robes, when she recognised where she was.

She began to run towards the castle, faster and faster across the field, aware of the pine trees around her and the dense scattering of rocks in the snow. Her heart beat faster and faster, hurting from the force. She didn't dare to look at the rocks, already petrified by the eyes that she'd been seeing in the visions and the dream. She came to a small wooden fence, and jumped it, plunging into the forest of trees, thinking about the visions.

She knew what it all meant now…how could she have been so blind before? Everything spelt out the same thing - the eyes, the blood, the boy and the girl, the girl was Beni - of course, she had to be. In the visions Beni could always see and feel what the girl was seeing and feeling, and the eyes…there was no questioning what they meant…death. Someone was going to try to kill her, someone symbolized by the boy…and they were going to try and kill her soon…

She flew through the forest, terrified, the trees grabbing at her long, burnt hair, tearing at her robes and scratching her face. Then she tripped - coming face to face with a pair of midnight red eyes…her heart began to pump faster, but she had expected that, so she kept running, a red haze settling over everything…

She calmed down a little as she reached the castle, pushed open the heavy, oak door and stepped inside, the reassuring protection of the Hogwarts castle settling in. She stopped running, and began to walk swiftly towards the place she knew she could find the one person who could help her…she knew that she couldn't go through this alone.


	8. Dead Love, Frozen Hate

A/N: This one's a mushy chapter guys, so it's for the Sam's, and Aariel – the skewering is for you.  
  
Chapter 8: Dead Love, Frozen Hate.  
  
Beni walked swiftly down the familiar, currently empty corridor, its comforting features, this time, not calming her. She knocked clearly on the heavy, black door, but received no answer. She took a deep breath, shuddered, and pushed it open. The office was trashed - the floor was flooded with water, broken glass and stationary, among the clutter were all manner of decaying specimens. Beni rushed across the room, water soaking her shoes and socks, pushing discarded bundles of parchment out of the way. She hurried up the stairs loudly, and burst into the bedroom - which was empty and deserted. She ran back out of the office, distressed...where else would he be?  
  
She ran to his classroom and pushed the door open roughly without knocking. She began to sigh in relief when she saw a class seated around boiling cauldrons. She moved further into the room and her gaze fell upon the teacher. She almost spat bitter disgust when she saw he was a substitute teacher, but he glared at her, sending electric, freezing chills down her spine. In a split second Beni uttered a sickening gasp and ran as fast as she could away from the classroom, the teacher still giving his burning stare, students laughter and confusion following her. There was something she really did not like about that teacher. Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano.  
  
She ran through the empty great hall, which was eerie in its isolation - and through to the staff room. All of the teachers looked up in surprise, shocked by her sudden, unexpected appearance. It took only milliseconds for her silvery eyes to sweep the room and comprehend that he was here again absent. She was panicking badly now, and a few of the teachers gasped as they watched her smoky silver eyes turn to blood red as they stared, but she didn't notice, nor did she care. Her mind had stopped functioning properly, if it ever did.  
  
"Where is he?!" she screamed into their stunned silence, everyone watching her.  
  
"WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?! WHAT'S HAPPENED TO HIM?! TELL ME!!!"  
  
No one moved, no one spoke. The only sound was the soft travelling of Beni's tears. Dumbledore approached her apprehensively, a pretensive look of concern on his face. "Fuck you all." Beni muttered to the ground, and whisked herself away, leaving small gasps of shock behind her, and sighs of relief that her presence would now fade.  
  
There was only one other place to go now. She followed the scarred path of the girl in the vision, through the three corridors, and to the same door the girl had opened to find the room - that eerie, mysterious, haunted room. Beni pushed the door open, the vision forgotten, and went straight to her crystal ball. This time she saw no confusing vision, but Severus walking nervously and briskly along dark, deserted corridors, taking the route that Beni recognised as the one to the Slytherin Common Room. She stood up quickly, knocking her crystal askew, flying out of the room, even forgetting to lock the door.  
  
She headed rapidly towards the Common Room, hardly noticing anything else in her surroundings but her central, current objective. She turned a corner and stopped dead, staring, transfixed, at the man at the other end of the corridor. He had done the same thing, and they both stood, drinking in the others appearance.  
  
Beni swayed, frozen, taking in his image, loving every small detail about him - the way his long, black, high-necked robes billowed around him in the invisible breeze, showing his thin, abused body...his long, matted, black hair that matched his empty, hating, black eyes that only came alive when he was staring at her. She wanted to run and touch his cold, pale skin, and kiss his icy, whitish blue lips.  
  
How long had he searched for her, and now here she was, right in front of him. He looked at her, painting her into his mind, the way her loosely fitting green dress hung off her delicate figure, her white skin against the blood red of her lips and her eyes, her long silver-to-black hair, with its burnt ends and messiness...the way her long, glittering, green ear-rings brushed against her bare shoulders, and the evil black tattoos scarred into her arm, finishing at her long, jagged black nails.  
  
Beni unexpectedly became overwhelmed by a sudden rush of contradictory feelings – and fainted, falling rapidly and smoothly to the ground in a pile of black hair and green robes. Severus ran to her – worried and distressed, he wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her face into his chest. Beni let herself sway in his embrace for a moment, until she remembered why she had been so desperate to find him.  
  
"Severus!" she broke away from him, and looked into his concerned, black eyes, glancing momentarily at the reflection of her red eyes in their centre.  
  
"I think someone is going to try to kill me – we have to do something – quick – we've got to go – hide – anything!!" she said frantically, standing up hurriedly with a firm grip on his sleeve.  
  
"Beni, wait – slow down, what are you talking about?" he asked her, pulling her around and gripping both of her shoulders, his stomach leaping.  
  
"Someone's going to try and kill me, Severus!" she said emphatically.  
  
"Who? How do you know?" he asked, matching her distress.  
  
"I don't know who! And I've been seeing the signs – dreaming it! I know..." she began to cry, her heart thumping so hard she thought it would burst through her insides at any moment.  
  
"Ok," he took a breath, and seemed to be thinking very quickly as to what they should do. "Come on." He pulled her down the other end of the corridor, and then they broke into a run, headed for his office.  
  
They ran past questioning students, knocking people out of the way, disregarding all of their surroundings. They turned corner after corner, running to the protectiveness of the office, in the meantime throwing caution to the winds, exposing themselves to all danger in the open castle, but adopting wariness as they flew through more desolate places.  
  
Severus began muttering unlocking spells as soon as they entered his corridor, and broke the door open with his shoulder and repaired it again when they were inside with a click of his fingers, which Beni thought was a slightly unnecessary show of strength and talent, but she didn't say anything. Instead she told him everything about the visions and the dream, and he paled ever whiter as she spoke.  
  
When she finished, he didn't say anything. Beni assumed he couldn't think of anything to say. She felt the same, so they sat in silence, Beni sitting quietly on the desk, Severus trying to restore his trashed office to its normal appearance.  
  
When he had finished, he turned to see Beni curled up asleep on the desk. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to his room, laying her gently on his bed, careful not to stir her from her occasional, calm sleep. He lay down beside her, slowly wishing himself into a similar sleep.  
  
* * * * *  
  
Beni woke suddenly, but quietly. She silently turned around so she was facing Severus, whose heavy body was resting against hers in a restless, troubled sleep. She sensed something different, something corrupt and rancid present, the feeling rushed through her body, giving her boiling chills, but a second later it had vanished.  
  
She shook him awake, and he sat up quickly, his wand in his hand, his eyes alive and alert. "Sorry. "she said, looking up at him, regretting waking him for nothing – but then his sleep did not look all that inviting either.  
  
"It's alright." he said, relaxing a little, sounding haunted by fatigue. He sighed deeply, but didn't look as though he had just woken up. He also seemed untroubled by the icy coldness of the room, as Beni was.  
  
"You don't sleep well." She noted, stating the obvious for something to say. He shook his head, and shifted his position so he was sitting up. Beni sat up too, staring sideways out of the window, watching the swirling blackness of the night-sky outside. He turned her face towards him and took a deep breath.  
  
"Beni, I want to marry you." He said softly, his deep, nasally voice fused with nervousness and anticipation, and also an appropriate loving truth.  
  
Beni gaped at him in shock. She had no idea that he felt that way – she didn't know what to do or what to think, she was in complete, utter shock. He mind was spinning, thoughts colliding and merging – and yet at the same time her mind seemed blank and dead. He shut his eyes, and opened them as if he couldn't believe what he was doing – what he was about to say, like he was pulling courage up from nowhere, bracing himself –  
  
"I love you, and I want to be there for you, to protect you – forever." He whispered, looking out of the window, in an uncomfortable silence. But he had gone this far; he couldn't just stop there. "Will you marry me, Beni?" he asked her, daring himself to look into her silvery eyes, to see the fathomless expression on her face, to hear her answer.  
  
Beni couldn't believe it; either that or she was in complete denial. She looked at him. She didn't need to think about this answer – she knew this was what she wanted too. Breathlessly she whispered into the venal, fraudulent silence that had once again taken over the room – "Yes."  
  
"How sickly romantic." A dark voice stated from the corner next to the window, a small ray of moonlight fell across the mouth and chin. He was clearly a man, as he wore a puffy, greying goatee. Beni and Severus froze, the man brought a putrid, reeking evil into the room, chilling their bones, confirming every nightmare of terror they'd ever had. "Beni Montano." The man said, his chin twitching slightly to left, as if to fill the pause in speech. Beni looked away from him; she stared at Severus, who was even more deathly white than usual. He was staring at the man by the window, who was talking. But Beni wasn't listening, she didn't want to know what he had to say, all she knew was that she wanted him gone, she wanted to watch as he burnt to his skeleton, flames taking him to hell, eating him alive, hear his screams of pain and feel his blood spurting out onto her skin.  
  
"You're a freak, too powerful to live with..." his voice cut on into the silence, Beni tuning in and out like a radio with pathetic reception. She looked anywhere but at the place where the man was standing, she clutched her wand in her icy hand, and said the words of the curse over and over in her mind – she was ready...  
  
Next to her Severus also clutched his wand, ever watchful, calculating, absorbing every slight disruption of the silence, never taking his eyes off the man by the window, who continued to speak in a dull, evil, drone.  
  
"And so, the time has come. You know what's going to happen, and you think you can stop it. But no one can change the future – whether they see it or not – you can't change it, Beni. "The man laughed evilly, a huge chin spasm distorting his face at the same time – a kind of giant twitch.  
  
Beni whipped around. There was a high-pitched scream, "AVADA KEDAVRA!!"  
  
The man slumped against the wall; eyes wide open, indulging in the sight before him in utter satisfaction. Beni lay on the floor, a tiny trickle of blood came from behind her head where she had hit the stone floor, her eyes a silvery mist, her hands slowly turning blue from cold, her hair sprawled across the floor, her heartbeat – ceased.  
  
Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano.  
  
Beni was dead. Severus stared at her – disbelieving...shocked...distraught. He fell to his knees beside her, and felt for her pulse. With sickening realisation he moved away from her empty, soulless, spiritless body. He stared at the man in the corner. The man who had taken away his only friend, the only person he had ever loved, the only warmth in his cold, empty, pathetic life, and he felt a hate so insatiable it matched no other.  
  
He walked menacingly up to the man, and was satisfied when he saw him flinch. Although a second later he had twitched, and stood straighter, bracing himself for Severus' attack. Severus lashed out and grabbed the man around the throat. But the man stayed calm. Severus slammed him up against a wall, his head lolling disgustingly – blood trickling down his forehead, across his face and over Severus' bony, white hands.  
  
The blood reminded him of Beni – and once more he smashed the man up against the wall with a new rush of strength, crushing the man's wand. At this point the man began to panic. He twisted and flailed, trying to pry himself out of Severus' tight, unbreakable grip around his neck.  
  
Severus, who had not yet used his own wand but still gripped it firmly between two fingers, clenched it so hard he thought it would turn to powder in his hand. He put the thinnest end of the wand against the front of the mans neck and pushed, skewering him with his wand. He bared his teeth in grim satisfaction as he felt the grinding of the wand against the inside of the mans throat, as he heard the mans painful gasp, a he saw the mans eyeballs roll back into their sockets, as he watched the victim of his anger fall to the ground, blood gently oozing out of the place where Severus' wand was still jammed through the mans neck.  
  
Severus sat on the bed, staring at the two dead bodies in front of him. He hurt as he looked at Beni. She had been a freak and a weirdo – but so was he. He had loved her when everyone else hated her, he had thought she beautiful when everybody else couldn't stand the sickening sight of her. And she had felt the same way about him.  
  
So many thoughts of regret filled his twisted, mournful mind – but the only thing that calmed him was the face of the dead man by the window, twisted grotesquely in pain. 


	9. Eternity With You

Chapter 9: Eternity With You  
  
He sat on the bed, his head in his hands, his hair falling into his eyes, blocking his vision of her body, but the thought of her haunted him severely. Hating the lump that was welled up in his throat, he got up and stalked out of the room. He couldn't be near her – it hurt too much. He sat down at his desk, looking around, everything reminding him of Beni.  
  
He heard a strange tapping noise at his door. He stood up, moved around his desk and opened it, Beni's crystal ball rolling slowly into his office, down the slightly sloping stone floor of the office. It came to a rest beside the leg of the desk, and red smoke began to swirl within it.  
  
A second later the depressed, doomed black surface had turned from pale to blood red. The crystal ball began to shake, and then shudder violently. Emitted from within its dank depths came a piercing scream, and a hazy black mist rose slowly from inside it.  
  
The mist unfurled and grew, threading through the air into smoky detail, rising ever higher until it formed a translucent image of Beni.  
  
Severus stared at her – stunned. He moved forward and put a hand up to brush her face – but his hand went right through her. His stomach squirmed with frustration.  
  
But then she reached out and put her arms around his neck – and he felt a small warm radiating from her feather light arms resting against his cool skin – and he knew she was where she had always wanted to be.  
  
She drew closer to him, closing her eyes. He leaned towards her – she had come back to give him the kiss they were always meant to have – but had never gotten. She bit the corner of his lip – harder and harder until it was excruciatingly painful, and then she pulled down. His scream was no more than a muffled groan – and suddenly the sound of tearing skin filled the air.  
  
Blood poured from the first separation, and Beni kept tearing, never letting go of his skin. Over his chin and down his neck – and finally across his chest, when she let go, his blood running down her chin, and his shrieks of pain reduced to shuddering gasps.  
  
She reached her long, black-nailed hand into his body, and enclosed his heart, closing her eyes as she felt its steady thumping in her hand. And then she pointed her nails into it, and pierced his heart – disappearing as he fell to the ground, leaving him there to bleed and squirm, dying with only thoughts of her in his mind.  
  
Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano. 


	10. My Everything

Disclaimer: All characters and related ideas from the Harry Potter books belong to J. K. Rowling – so you can't sue me! Mwa ha ha!  
  
Thanks to the following people for being my inspiration and my motivation to actually keep this thing going and finally finish it!  
  
Sam L: Thanks for all the support and stuff – when my parents aren't home they're gone too – oh excellent hey? – and I have demolished all evidence of the flying lounge rooms with joint kitchens and upstairs bathrooms – lol, that still makes me laugh.  
  
Sam R: Ok – all the mushy stuff that ever happened in this book is mostly blamed on you! Sorry you also hate the ending and I hope I didn't make you sick! Once again also – you are my non-lesbian romantic-inspiration...draco loves ya!  
  
Aariel: Yay! It's finished! All over! So now you can stop hiding from the light and come kill some sheeny's with me! Pity they didn't die when the bus driver tried to kill us at Balmain...  
  
Paige: Yes, you can come kill sheenys with us too! Girl you kick ass so...keep kicking it...  
  
Tessa: Thanks for the chains via Paige, u sound really cool even though you will probably never read this – and if you do you will probably wish you didn't...  
  
Hannah: Thankyou for the door idea – it rocks! All of your ideas rock, you creative thing you...thanks muchly...  
  
Anyone who reviewed/s: Thankyou heaps – its a lot of motivation and inspiration for a writer to know what you think of their story, so feel special! 


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